Marauding Through the Night
by muxiaogou
Summary: He looked like the calm, beautiful morning after a terrible storm.


In the early days everything seemed so simple. Skipping stones in the river. Breezing through the fields of wildflowers. Sinking your teeth into a freshly picked fig, letting the juices splash out of your mouth like a puddle. The skies were bright blue, clouds shaped in so many different forms. Everything could be shifted into a dreamlike reality with a touch of a child's imagination. But things couldn't be more different now.

When I was a boy, I was taught to be set to stripping my kill. But I was not strong, I was small, slight. I was not fast. I could not carry a sword without collapsing. I already knew what was expected of me. I already knew about warriors who tussle like lions and drop and slept the sleep of bronze, poor man, poor boy, striving to help his fellow men.

I remember my father, Fugaku, Uchiha-soldier, on his first leave.

When he came home, shaking his spear, he opened his mouth, almost said something. Almost.

My father's halls were dark and silent. He scowled at me, watching. He had never been able to imagine anything other than only havoc, irreversible chaos, and fleeing men of Konoha flung back on their ships. He drew the terror, the mad terror -

My hands shook, feeling his gaze on me.

"I thrusted my spear and sword, and the blood came flowing warm from his wound."

 _The blood came flowing warm from his wound ..._

I did not know the real meaning of war, and I thought that I'd never will.

I am four when I meet the man with the kind face. He moved slowly in spite the presence of my mother and father sitting in their great silver chairs, their royal blood blazing against his fervor, and even while he tried jokes, I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped to a corner beside me with a sigh, and I looked a little more attentively at his face. Shining, his yellow skin, his lambent eyes, the bronze flashing of his hair. All of him I thought could be royal, but he was nothing more than a simple herald. I thought perhaps his looks were the reason my mother favored him being their message-bearer. Indeed, he was true to his name, they called him Minato of the Flash, flying through narrow lanes between castles and carriages to bear letters and announcements.

Minato turned to me and smiled, "Do you want to play?"

"Play?"

"Dice." He opened his glowing hands to show them, carved bone flecked with gold dye.

I blinked. I had never been asked to play before.

"No," I said. I lifted my chin to show him that I was someone of importance.

The runner leaned his hand towards my own, almost hopefully.

"My son loves to play with dice," he said.

A silent moment had passed, and he pressed the dice into my fingers before grinning and walking away.

My hands felt very warm with the gift. I found myself smiling at the satisfaction of each smooth dice.

I turned to glance at my father, face still dark. I did not want him to see. Me, the Uchiha prince playing and laughing with "pointless" games. I told myself I did not need to be any more of a disappointment. My gaze fell upon the dice. They glowed, then flamed, then fell as ash to the ground.

I remember at age seven catching a glimpse of hair bright like the sun slipping through the marketplace one day. His skin was a warm gold; his feet nimble, as if his body were carefully spun by the gods themselves with yarn and needle. He glowed with curiosity, with a yearn to travel throughout the world. How I could fit all of this in one glance was beyond me. I myself was surprised at my skill in inference. But his face seemed childlike yet as if it had lived a thousand years; a book left open for me to read freely but unknown, an ancient language left to rot, at the same time. The way his defined nose and blue eyes pierced through my soul for a moment too short came off strikingly familiar, but I could not place where I had seen it. I could not understand why a part of me desired to speak with him, to be in his godlike presence.

For a split second, he turned his head and looked over his shoulder to see me. Or, perhaps, not me, but the crowd picking up speed around him. My breath caught in my throat - the thought of his eyes on mine stirred up something deep inside me that paralyzed my mind from thinking anything else.

After regaining my composure, I realized that he had disappeared into the crowd, nowhere to be found. I nearly smacked myself in the face; why had I let him go? Deciding it was for the best, that I had no intention of striking up a real conversation with the boy anyway, that besides, I did not know what I would say to him, I gathered my things and left with a heavy heart. As I passed the shops adjacent to me, I wondered if I would ever see him again. It was an intriguing thought.


End file.
